The Tragedy of Haiti

Five days after the earthquake in Haiti, the enormity of the bare numbers seems too much to comprehend. Some 140,000 lie dead -- tens of thousands of bodies are still entombed beneath the rubble. And an ever-dwindling handful of survivors lie with them, trapped alive, awaiting either rescue or death.

In Port-Au-Prince, 300,000 citizens have no home but the streets. More than three-and-a-half million Haitians, according to the Red Cross, find their lives turned inside out by the quake and its aftermath.

This weekend, help is flowing into Haiti; the trickle has become a stream. Hundreds of thousands of meals have been distributed. Three U.S. government water purification systems are up and running. And by Monday morning some 12,000 American troops will be on station, organizing and distributing relief.

But the tragedy of Haiti and the scope of the response are not something that can be totaled in numbers. They are, as our Byron Pitts has discovered, best understood through the eyes of the people who have come to offer help. Much of what they're seeing is difficult to watch, but this is the reality of Haiti.